The Ultimate Guide to Colorado Distilleries: All About Amari

Over the past five or so years, aperitivi and amari—those bittersweet, herbal liqueurs traditionally sipped in Italy before or after a meal, respectively—have topped trend reports, spreading in popularity and availability from the Boot to the bars, restaurants, and distilleries of the United States. In Colorado, you may have noticed the roving amari cart at Boulder’s Frasca Food and Wine or been enticed by an amaro-centric cocktail at Uptown’s Southern Italian restaurant Coperta.

But none have gone as far as Elliot Strathmann, co-owner and bar manager of Highland’s Spuntino, who has been handcrafting amari using local botanicals since 2014. He experienced the digestivi tradition firsthand as he and his wife, Cindhura Reddy (Spuntino’s chef-owner), ate their way across Abruzzo, Italy, in 2012. “At the end of every meal, the old guy of the establishment would come out with an unmarked bottle and insist that we drink some,” Strathmann recalls. “It was always genziana, a gentian-root-based liqueur traditional to Abruzzo. It’s bitter as can be and I hated it at the time…but now I get to be that guy.” Strathmann has made more than 30 batches of aperitivi and digestivi liqueurs, including a Campari-esque version with local chokecherries, a Fernet-Branca-style amaro, and of course, a Colorado genziana with foraged gentian root. Should you care to try one or two, Strathmann will eagerly oblige.